Daddy's Little Girl (8 page)

The man looked as if he wanted to choke her.

That was Carnes’s first impression as he came awake in the overstuffed armchair in Beth Daye’s apartment. Having dozed off while Beth was fixing him breakfast, he regained his senses only in time to fling himself from the chair and start toward the man who seemed to be endangering Beth.

But as sleep drained from his eyes, he saw a peculiar thing happen.

Instead of following through as if he were going to strangle her, the man brought something from behind his back and waved it in front of her face.

A dandelion.

Carnes stopped moving, knowing now that he didn’t comprehend this scene, no matter what his eyes had related at first.

Beth, trembling, said, “It’s all right. I didn’t hear him come in. He just startled me. That’s why I screamed.”

Carnes sighed, shaking his head. “I thought—”

“I know what you thought, and thanks for coming to my rescue so quickly.” She turned to the tall, odd, grubby man who stood scarecrow-still, staring at her with fond, inscrutable eyes.

“This is Richard,” she said. “He’s a very special man.”

Obviously not wanting to say anything that would hurt Richard, she used the word “special” as a code to Carnes.

Carnes nodded. Put out his hand.

After long moments, finally understanding that it was the proper thing to do even though nobody had ever done it to him before, Richard put out his own hand. The two men shook. Richard smiled, seeming inordinately pleased.

“Now you two,” Beth said pleasantly, “how about some breakfast?”

An hour later, still sitting at the table, Beth said, “Would you like to go to the bathroom, Richard?”

Sometimes the man forgot his toilet training and you had to remind him.

Richard nodded.

Beth got up, showed him the way.

She returned and sat across from Carnes. “You ready for some sleep?”

Carnes yawned, as if on cue. “I’m afraid so.”

“Afraid?”

“Something might happen with Deirdre—”

“I’ll phone the sheriff, tell him you’re here. He’ll call me right away.”

“Well—” Carnes said.

“It’ll do you good. Help you think more clearly. The strain—”

Carnes nodded, had to agree she was correct. He angled his head toward the bathroom. “I guess you’ll be safe enough with Richard.”

“Very safe. He’s a sweet man. Innocent in his way.”

Beth thought uneasily of the blood on Richard’s hands last night.

“Well—” Carnes said again.

“C’mon,” Beth said.

Her bedroom was a tidy affair of pinks and whites. In its frilly pillows and stuffed animals, Carnes could see the young girl she’d been not too many years earlier.

Beth pulled back the covers for him. He started to unbutton his shirt. He was exhausted, almost punchy.

He dropped on to the bed.

Beth stood over him, smiling in a sad sort of way.

He tried to return the smile.

There wasn’t time.

Sleep overcame him.

When she was sure he was out, Beth left the room and slipped across the apartment to the wall phone in the kitchen.

She punched the digits for the sheriff’s office. Deputy Vince Reeves answered.

“May I speak to the sheriff, please, Vince?”

He recognized her voice. “Not here,” he said. “He had a long night. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to get a little sleep for himself.”

Vince, whom she liked, sounded odd today. Strained. Anxious. Nervous.

“You all right, Vince?”

He was lying. Obviously. “Sure, Beth. Just a bit tired myself.”

“Could you come over to my apartment?”

This was a kind of test question. The playful Vince she knew would usually make a harmless sexual innuendo of her request.

Today all he said was, “Sure, if you need me to.”

“I do.”

“What’s up?”

“Richard.”

“Our Richard?”

“Our Richard.”

“What, is something wrong with him?”

“I’ll explain when you get here. Please hurry as fast as you can.”

“Sure,” he said, “sure.”

There had been a town pageant a few years back, and, on a hot July night, root beer and hot dog in hand, Jake had sat on a park bench and learned more about local history than he ever had before.

He thought of that now as he walked along the downtown sidewalks.

Merchants sweeping the sidewalks in front of their stores.

Mothers pulling children along the streets.

Old men already taking their places in chairs on the front porch of the Penrod Hotel.

This was Jake’s town, and he never wanted to leave it.

He liked the way the sunlight angled across the store windows, creating glass of pure gold.

He liked the way the bandstand looked in the center of the town square, like a boat buoyed on a river of green.

He liked the War Memorial with its thrilling statue of Marines lofting the American flag.

He liked everything about the town but the slight air of tension he sensed this morning.

The girl missing.

People shouldn’t let such things affect them—there was nothing they could do about them, such events were beyond their control. Didn’t they ever read those articles in
People
magazine about controlling stress? But they sure did let this missing girl affect them.

You could see it in their eyes. Hear it in their voices. Even see it in the way some of them walked this morning.

A little tight.

A little edgy.

Usually they smiled at Jake, offered him any number of verbal goodies, from jokes to backslaps, but this morning they were all over at Delia’s Diner scowling.

On his way to the bakery, where he planned to get Ruth and Minerva some very special treats, he paused outside the diner and waved inside.

A few people waved back.

But he could tell they weren’t in the right moods.

They didn’t even wave exactly. Just little squiggles with a few fingers. Not even their whole hands.

Jake hated days like this—in the spring sometimes you got days on end like this, when there were floods in the flatlands, or following a nearby tornado.

This close a brush with unexpected death seemed to do something to people. Make them shrivel up inside. Turn an inward eye toward their own waiting graves.

Jake shrugged, walked on.

Above the bakery door was a bell that tinkled when Jake walked in.

Fat and red-cheeked Mr. Baines was behind the glass counter. He was so red-faced it was as if he scoured his face with Bon-Ami or something.

But that was why he made such a good Santa Claus at all the Christmas functions.

Fat, funny, merry—that was Mr. Baines.

Before he even said anything, Baines pushed across a platter of tiny donuts—his specialty, and the way he always greeted people, offering the little donuts.

“Thanks, Mr. Baines,” Jake said, taking one.

Mr. Baines smiled. “You can’t fool me.”

“What?” Mr. Baines’s statement sounded faintly threatening to Jake.

Mr. Baines nodded to the donut tray. “You want more than one, don’t you?”

Jake sighed. “Oh, sure. The donuts. More than one. You bet.”

Mr. Baines laughed. “How about two?”

“Two would be nice.”

“How about three, then?”

Jake smiled. Mr. Baines loved games. “Three would be even nicer, I guess.”

“Help yourself.”

With that he put the plate down for Jake to pick and choose from. There were several different kinds of icing, after all.

The phone rang and Mr. Baines went to get it. Within seconds he was booming out a laugh and treating his caller to a “snappy” story about a woman whose breasts were as large as balloons.

Jake looked at the sunlight on the sidewalk.

He loved sunlight.

Most people didn’t realize that sunlight came in different colors and textures.

They couldn’t even tell the difference between March sunlight, say, and August sunlight.

Jake had a set of
Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedias
that he’d gotten one-a-week at the supermarket, and he knew about many things, sunlight included.

Staring now, he thought of how sunlight must have looked millions and millions of years ago when dinosaurs roamed the planet (the big beasts were another object Jake was fond of reading about).

Golden light shining on strange ferns ...

Then he thought of how sunlight used to stream into his bedroom when he was a boy and how he’d lingered so warmly in it, lazy as a cat....

“You must be thinking about dinosaurs again,” Mr. Baines said.

Jake looked up, surprised. The baker was off the phone. Standing behind him now.

“No. Sunlight.”

“Oh,” Mr. Baines laughed, “a new one. You must have got a
Funk and Wagnall’s
supplement.”

Jake smiled. “No. Same set.”

“You hear my joke about the woman with boobies like balloons?”

Jake nodded and looked down at his donut. He didn’t like “saucy” stories. They embarrassed him. It was great getting dirty magazines when you were alone but—Mr. Baines’s mood changed suddenly.

“I suppose you heard about that girl disappearing last night?”

“Yes.”

“They catch the sonofabitch that did it—” Mr. Baines, for the first time in Jake’s memory, looked angry.

His cheeks got even redder.

His big, flour-covered hands did not look friendly now. Instead they seemed massive, threatening.

Mr. Baines had daughters. Three of them. Fat and red-cheeked as Mr. Baines himself.

“Yeah. That’s real bad,” Jake said.

“They catch him—rip—right off with them.” Mr. Baines made a clawing gesture as if he were castrating somebody by hand.

The bell tinkled and a small older lady wearing an outfit too young for her—designer jeans and a cowboy shirt—came in and smiled at both of them.

“What kind of donuts do you have for me today, Mr. Baines?”

Mrs. Cropmeister’s irrevocable good cheer changed Mr. Baines’s face. He grinned. “The kind I have every morning, Mrs. Cropmeister—the best.”

He handed her over the plate with the donuts and she selected one. Wide-eyed. Like a child.

“Ummmm,” she said.

She even sounded like a teenager, Jake thought, even though she was well into her sixties.

She licked her lips the way erotic young women did on certain candy commercials—Jake knowing very well what they really had in mind when they licked that way-eye-smiled at Jake.

“How are the girls?” Mrs. Cropmeister asked him.

To everybody in town, Ruth Foster and Minerva Smythe were “the girls,” the slightly odd but wholly enjoyable and wholesome ladies who lived in the mansion on the edge of town.

“Oh, they’re fine.”

“You tell that damn Ruth to give me a call. And soon. And you can tell her I said damn,” Mrs. Cropmeister said, “that way she’ll know that I mean it.” Then she shook her head. “I’d drive out there myself but I can’t leave until dark and with that young girl missing—” She shook her head. “Though from what I hear, he may have invented it.”

“Invented what? Who are you talking about?” Mr. Baines asked.

“The father. From what I hear—” leaning in conspiratorially, Jake and Mr. Baines leaning in with her—“the sheriff thinks the father may have done something with her and then made up a story about her being missing.”

“Killed his own daughter?” Mr. Baines said, genuine shock playing in his voice.

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I’m afraid things like that happen all the time, Mr. Baines.”

“In cities they happen, Mrs. Cropmeister. Not in small towns like ours.”

“Well, they’ve happened before, Mr. Baines.”

He scowled, waggled his head no.

“Of course, they have. Over the years different women have been reported missing. Hitchhikers and women with car trouble mostly—but they were seen around here before they disappeared,” Mrs. Cropmeister said.

This time he scoffed. “Oh, back in the hippie days, when all those young ruffians came through here—”

“Long before the ‘hippie’ days, as you call them, Mr. Baines”

Jake enjoyed this sparring.

It was like watching a tennis match.

One opponent, Mr. Baines, played with the bluster of a professional wrestler.

The other, Mrs. Cropmeister, played with the skill of a very highly paid assassin. She went for the deft, subtle jab, often making him do damage to himself.

Jake smiled.

Mr. Baines caught his smile. His red face ignited with anger.

He was no longer the Mr. Baines who handed out free donuts. “Something funny?”

“No,” Jake said quickly.

Meanness came into Mr. Baines’s eyes now. “You don’t have a wife, do you?”

“No.”

“No kids, either, do you?”

“That’s enough, Mr. Baines,” Mrs. Cropmeister said. “Jake’s a very nice man.”

“Then why doesn’t he have a wife and kids?”

“Maybe he’s had a tragic life,” Mrs. Cropmeister said. She was known to read historical novels. This sounded like a line from one.

“Tragic life,” Mr. Baines sneered.

“I need some bakery,” Jake said.

“You do, do you?” Mr. Baines said.

“Ruth and Minerva want some,” Jake said, making it clear that he wanted none for himself.

He looked over the glass case of goodies. The cakes and pies. The cookies and pastries.

Mr. Baines was a jerk sometimes, but there could be no doubting his skill as a baker.

“See now, you went and shot your mouth off to a very good customer, didn’t you, Mr. Baines?” Saying this, Mrs. Cropmeister put her hand on Jake’s elbow and started patting as if she were in the company of an exceptionally friendly collie.

“I still want to know why he doesn’t have a wife and kids.”

Jake offered a sad smile. “Maybe I did, once. Maybe she up and left me one day and took our kid with her.”

“My God,” Mrs. Cropmeister said. “See, I told you, Mr. Baines. A tragic life.”

Despite himself, Mr. Baines had obviously been moved. Something very much like pity shone in his tiny eyes. “Hell,” he said, a sudden rasp in his voice, “why the hell don’t you tell a guy things like that?” he said to Jake.

Jake shrugged sadly.